Mon Apr 16, 2007

I'm guessing if you're not one of the 40 or so people who've actually been to The Meatwave, that might not mean much to you yet. So I figure it's best to start up this blog with a little back story, just in case you're wondering how a boy raised in a Kosher household in suburban DC found a love for barbecue in NYC.

Let's start with the basics, The Meatwave is a bbq that I run every other weekend during the summer months. It began in 2003, but allow me get all psychological on your ass for a second and tell you it really began when I was four years old. Did I just blow your mind?

It was at this age that my sister was born, and for reasons I still can't fully comprehend, my parents found it necessary to deprive me of my favorite food, ham, in the name of religious expression. They said they did this for us, as a constant reminder that we're Jewish and it's part of our culture. Now I'm all for Jewish culture and I don't turn my back on that, but taking away a man's ham just adds a page in the long history of a peoples' suffering.

So I lived fourteen years of my life finding ways of eating pork that my parents found acceptable. I won't mislead you, I wasn't totally without pork, but I always felt that it was taken away from me and vowed never to keep Kosher once I left home. That happen in 1997, when I moved to NYC for college, and where I remain today.

In the beginning of the summer of 2003 I moved into a "cottage" (as it was advertised on Craigslist) in Astoria. I was impressed by the thought of having my own free standing, tiny house in NY, but the broker was set on selling me on the idea of having the courtyard space for a grill. I had never grilled before, but acted on this selling point by purchasing a very cheap, very small grill, the type you see at bargain stores around the city. In what would normally be a very unremarkable event, I invited my friends over for a housewarming bbq, but it was there that The Meatwave was born.

Trying to forget the horrible taste the match light charcoal left on my hot dogs and hamburgers that day, I prefer to focus on my friend Chris, who was in town visiting from Chicago, and how he off-handily joked that he and his friends grilled so often that they were stuck in the middle of a Meatwave. The summer of 2003 continued, I had a couple more barbecues and was enjoying it so much that it seemed to me that NYC was due for a Meatwave of its own.

2004 brought the official start of The Meatwave, and a rocky one at that. I naively left my grill out, uncovered, all winter, so when I opened it to kick off "CmmmmmmmEAT," I was greeted with a grate of rust. Salvaging that first, cold Meatwave, I knew that my little grill was done for, but was a little cash strapped to go out and get the Weber kettle I wanted. I searched the internet for a deal to keep The Meatwave going and found one on a Char-Broil 22%u201D kettle at Home Depot. Overly excited by my find, I couldn't wait and had to take the rest of the day off work to get to the store and purchase my grill (good thing too, I had gotten the last one).

As the years of The Meatwave continued, I was compelled by sitting next to my grill all day, hand holding a fire between 225-250 degrees and smoking chicken, ribs, and pork shoulders (not an easy task in a kettle grill). The more I barbecued, the more I wanted to keep trying new things, which led to the acquisition of my Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker in 2006.

So that brings me to today. Four summers have past, I've learned a lot about barbecue and grilling, and I keep wanting more. I love sharing my food with my friends and thought this blog would be a great way to keep a good thing going by sharing it all with you too.

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Comments

01

*k* saysdude! you have a weber grill??? and why aren't you doing the meatwave thing memorial day wknd why we're there?.. DO IT! :) or do whatever you want i guess... hahaPosted Tue, Apr 17 2007 12:48pm

Faye Brenner saysI remember how much Josh got around the kosher rules! One of my favorite Josh food stories was one Passover at his Nana and Poppy's house when he asked for a ham sandwich. (His maternal grandparents were not kosher, but they didn't eat bread during Passover.) So Nana gave him a ham sandwich on matzah! He was a happy camper!Posted Tue, Apr 17 2007 5:21pm